The Globe. FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1876

Globe, Volume V, Issue 574, 21 April 1876, Page 2

The Globe. FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1876

The Premier has answered the letter of the Honourable the Superintendent of Otago. Mr Macandrew's epistle has evidently received at the hands of Sir Julius Vogel much consideration, and his reply to the statements therein must be sufficient to convince all but the most persistent provincialists. The Premier characterises the expenditure of the Otago province as gigantic as considering the population, and states the during the last session of the Provincial Government appropriations were passed amounting to £909,000, and goes on to say :—" Concurrently " the province has sacrificed the land " by large sales to runholders ; it has " endeavoured to withdraw from ordi- " nary purposes enormous blocks of " country for fear that the land might " be otherwise absorbed ; in short, the " Provincial Government for some time " past has proceeded as fast as it pos- " sibly could, in anticipation appa- " rently, of some dreaded change." What this dreaded change is to be is inferred from the remainder of Sir Julius's reply, it is without question the abolition of the Province of Otago, and if the Superintendent of that province has any hope that the Assembly will except the province of Otago from abolition ; the Premier holds out no Buch hope, and hesitates not to say that many districts of the province long for abolition to remove evils. To what advantage the land has been sacrificed we cannot see. We cannot understand why the revenueof a district cannot be spent with equal advantage to its inhabitants by one form of Government as well as another, and why they haste to sell before a change in the political institutions takes place. To what cause then can be attributed these large sales to runholders, except it be to the fear that the General Government has the intention of depriving the provinces of the control of their laud funds ; but admitting this to be the case for the sake of argument, is it not a system which not only is unjust, but positively ruinous to the colony as a whole —we have only to look at figures for an instant to see what the results will be. Land worth £IOO,OOO to the colony is sacrinced by any one province for £50,000. This is a loss to the country in order that one section of it may have the gratification of expending the money ; and whilst thousands of acres of the best land in the colony have been parted with at sums very considerably below their real value on this system, it is not to be supposed but that a large proportion of the population of Otago will agree with Sir Julius Vogel, and welcome the day which will place the land of the colony beyond the control of Provincial Councils.